


oasis

by scythias



Series: the shrieking blade [1]
Category: Original Work, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Burns, Gen, One Shot, Siblings, Stranded, The Shrieking Blade, help her, raki is a whole ass adolescent in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24738079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scythias/pseuds/scythias
Summary: Dema’s crying. “I’m scared,” he whimpers.Me too, Raki wants to say. She’s so scared. Petrified, even. For the first time in their entire lives, they’re alone. But she can’t let him know that. She needs to make sure that he knows who to trust, and she needs to show that she’s strong enough for him to do so. She can’t let him see her afraid. If he sees her afraid once, he’ll never see her any other way. She needs to be strong. For him.“I know,” she offers instead.
Relationships: Raki Xokro & Dema Xokro
Series: the shrieking blade [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1788790
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	oasis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [interstellartreasure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstellartreasure/gifts).



> toby: bro,,,,,,,bro idk if u would have the motivation for this but u should write something small w [raki] caring for dema after that,,,, wanting to hug but probably not being able to bc owch oof still [that one word that's not sore or vulnerable but word machine broke so i dont know which one it is] sensitive??? something like that. basically. [holds]
> 
> ask and you shall receive.

The well in the center of nowhere seemed too convenient to be true.

When she had hoisted herself, her belongings, and her baby brother over the precipice of the sand dune  _ ( striped across the flats in shades ranging from bloody crimson to stark white ) _ , Raki had caught sight of the small well down on the sand flats beyond. It’s as if the wind that was no longer pressing against her knocked the breath out of her lungs. With no regard to her aching limbs or the burns that linger on her skin, she scrambles down the dune towards the well. Her feet — one bare, the other wrapped in hasty bandages — kick up the sands as she runs. Her brother shifts on her back in her sprint, further scraping against the wounds across it.

When she finally reaches the small oasis in the middle of nowhere, she plops down on her knees against the side of the cobblestone basin. Within it is freshwater, swishing freely and still filled near the brim. A small pail rested on the side of it, a rope tethering it to the rectangular shade above. Quickly, she grabs the pail and dunks it into the water. The chill — so foreign, so  _ new _ to her after an entire day of trekking the desert with her belongings in one hand and her baby brother slung over her back — stings the tiny burns that remain on her fingertips. She yanks it out of the well and brings the cool water to her lips, finally quenching her thirst. It’s euphoric.

She drinks up the rest of the water akin to a thirsty animal  _ ( she was practically one at this point ) _ . She gently shoulders off her brother’s arms around her neck and dunks the pail in again, this time bringing it up to her sleeping brother’s lips. “Dema…” she whispers to him. Her voice is scratchy, hoarse from disuse and the fumes she had inhaled hours earlier. “Dema, c’mon…”

Dema stirs, always the light-sleeper, and blinks out the tire from his eyes. Despite his youth, barely a few days since he turned five, he’s ragged. The black tattoos over his deep magenta skin appear worn, and his tufts of midnight curls are left in patches from where the fires had spurted out. He makes a small vulnerable noise before parting his lips, allowing Raki to tip the bucket further into his mouth. When he manages to finish off the entire pail, Raki places it back on the ground and wipes off the excess water that dribbled down Dema’s chin.

She digs through their belongings. It’s in the form of a sack, one of those fishing nets that their father had used for poaching, filled with the supplies she had salvaged from the wreckage of their home. She finds a canteen among the contents — just big enough to sustain them for a week at most. Raki fills it up to the brim until it’s near imploding.

“Let me see your burns,” she tells Dema, who nods distantly. He takes off his shirt, a tunic embedded with stretching holes and soot spots, revealing the array of white bandages that Raki had wrapped around him earlier that day. They had already accumulated a lot of dirt, and hung loosely around the pores that jutted from the narrow expanses of stomach that could be seen through them.

Raki had felt nothing but relief when she had seen that his wounds were not too bad when she had gone to check him right after the crash. She had taken the brunt of the explosion for him, and despite the several burns that ran over his cheeks, shoulders, and stomach, that had been where most of the pain was from. She took out a rag from the supply bag and dipped it in the water as Dema shrugged off his remaining bandages, letting her get a glimpse of the horrific burns beneath.

They appeared as welts, tumors on his tattooed body. The beautiful dark pink was affected by an array of deep crevices, displacements in the skin. Luckily, they didn’t reach too much to the tissue beneath — still the sight was enough to clench at Raki’s heart.

_ ( Surprisingly, she wasn’t crying. She doesn’t know why. Maybe the fires had dried up her tears before they could come out. ) _

She retrieves the rag and places it gently against the burns, just like hours before. Immediately, Dema hisses. Tears gather at the corners of his irises.

“Hurts,” he says. Raki nods.

“Just breathe.”

Their father and mother didn’t teach them much about first care. Her mother had always assumed she could use her “magick” to heal them and they would be in just as spruce shape as they were originally. Her father did teach Raki a few tricks, like bandaging wounds in the midst of blaster fire and repairing a hyperdrive in less than ten minutes. Luckily, he taught her about tending burns; though nothing as massive as these. He had taught them to treat minor blaster scrapes — not full-on bodily burns.

Still, she knew enough. She applied pressure to the points of his body that experienced the most amount of burns, making sure to get every single tumor of skin accounted for. Dema, thank the stars, was a good patient. He kept his small whimpers to a minimum, squeezing his eyes shut as she used the fresh cold cloth to clean down the lingering soot on him. When she was finished, she fished out a new pack of bandages and some gel substance, which she applied onto the wounds before bandaging them back up again.

“Good?” she asks him.

Dema nods.

“Too much pain?”

Dema shakes his head.

Good. Good.

She hands Dema the pail with more water to drink out of, before dipping the rag in the well again. She strips off the loose shirt she had been wearing. The sweltering heat of the desert caused her wounds to sting once she had unwrapped her bandaging, but she ignores it in favor of the new coolant she applies to her skin.

She knows she looks horrible. She knows that out of the two of them, she had taken most of the initial explosion. Her entire backside was littered in burns, from the collar beneath the uneven curls of her short hair to the small dip in her spine. Her face was no different — there were at least three patches of welts that rose from the tissue and mangled up the tattoos over them. An entire portion of the hair on her scalp was burnt. She could barely take any step without feeling the grueling pain of scorching flames against her heel. Yet she can’t help but feel relief.

_ At least it’s not Dema. _

She bites back a scream as she presses the cloth against her backside. It burns. Burns so hot that she’s practically on fire again, writhing in agony as she cradles her skull in one hand and her baby brother in the other. Yet she persists. She can remember it vaguely _ ( her parents screaming, her rushing to Dema, the ship falling to pieces all around them in the form of glass and destruction, a piercing white )  _ yet she tries to ignore it with gritted teeth, applying each dab to her skin. At least it’s not Dema.

Dema, whose own golden eyes have fixated them onto her form with a type of melancholy, a worry that she wishes she would never have to maintain on her, speaks. “You have more burns.”

“I’m fine,” she snarls. She sends him a glare to hold him off, though she doubts it’s effective. Her face is contorted into anguish at the moment, and it could be seen as bright as day.

“No, you’re not.” Before she could yank it back, Dema snatches the cloth and presses it gently against her back himself. Raki groans, digging her long nails into the cuffs of her pants. She can see Dema wince. “Sorry.”

“Whatever,” she huffs. Raki turns her face away. She doesn’t bother to argue — stubbornness ran in their family, and it would be stupid to challenge Dema on the matter.

When he had finished cleaning up her dirt, Raki applies her own share of ointment and wraps her bandages back around herself again, flipping them around so that the ones that had pressed against the initial injury faced outward. Dema frowns. “Why aren’t you using new ones?”

“I used them all on you,” Raki says. Dema doesn’t say anything after that.

She pulls back on her shirt and places Dema’s finished pail back on the edge of the well. She takes a look up at the night sky above. They had been walking the entire day — well, Raki was the one doing all of the walking. Dema got tired easily, and could only maintain his pace for half the trip before collapsing and having Raki give him a ride on her back. At first, he had been very adamant about not further injuring his sister’s scarred back, though he begrudgingly complied by the end. He had given her his fair share of complaints though, before passing out at around ten minutes in.

The stars are pretty. Here, away from the cityscapes of Nal Hutta or Corellia, constellations littered the dark abyss of the sky. Like rivers they ran through the deep abyss, twinkling lights sparkling with each tilt of Raki’s throbbing head. It’s almost whiplash to see something so beautiful after having to stare at the scorching suns of the planet they had crashed upon for hours. The dunes around them were cast in a deep midnight shade, and the hisses of the critters scuttling around had gone silent.

After a few moments of pondering, she makes her decision. “We’ll camp here for the night,” she tells him. “It’s getting late.”

Dema nods. Raki coaxes him into laying down despite the grimaces from his bodily burns, then places the supply sack she had salvaged behind his head to act as a pillow. He attempts not to shift in discomfort against the striped sands beneath.

Raki situates herself next to him on the long sack, facing up towards the night sky. It’s cold. After having to deal with the scorching fires of the wreckage of their ship and the high temperatures of the planet they are currently stranded on, the chill is foreign enough to hurt. She shivers violently and shifts to her side to ease the tension in her backside, wrapping her arms around her torso as she whimpers quietly. She hopes Dema didn’t hear her. She didn’t want him to be scared for her. The only thing he should be scared for was himself.

It’s quiet for a while. Raki is attempting to fall asleep despite the thoughts that ravage her brain, and her anxiety at times becomes so high that she has to continuously check on her brother to make sure he is still next to her in one piece. This planet was dangerous — just being in this system was bad luck. So of course they would have to be stranded on the one world that people had feared the most. The only hope they had was the small village their parents had been heading to to collect their father’s payment for a smuggling job, down to the southwest. Raki knew the way _ ( father always told her which way is which ) _ ; yet there’s a large part of her that screams they’ll never make it, that they’ll die before they even manage to get off this stupid planet.

_ She was not going to cry. She can’t cry. She’s not going to let herself cry. _

She hears tousling next to her, and she opens her eyes again to see Dema, shifting closer to her and shivering even more so than her. She feels herself soften at the sight. Raki scoots closer to her baby brother, gently bringing him closer to her warmth. She hears him hiss silently as she wraps her arms around his sensitive form, and readjusts her grip on him so he is as comfortable as he can be. She brings his head close with just enough space so neither would touch one another’s fresh wounds. It’s discomforting to her, but for her baby brother, it’s worth it.

Dema’s crying. “I’m scared,” he whimpers.

_ Me too _ , Raki wants to say. She’s so scared. Petrified, even. For the first time in their entire lives, they’re alone. But she can’t let him know that. She needs to make sure that he knows who to trust, and she needs to show that she’s strong enough for him to do so. She can’t let him see her afraid. If he sees her afraid once, he’ll never see her any other way. She needs to be strong. For him.

“I know,” she offers instead. She closes her eyes, fighting back another wave of tears.

She gently tugs Dema closer to provide him as much warmth as she can muster in the dead of night, and waits for his quiet snores to permeate her ears before she falls as well.

**Author's Note:**

> hey how to fuck do you care for second-degree burns


End file.
